Last Night

[Fay]

Went outside, last night, but not dark until about midnight, so no point unless one is prepared to sit up all night. It was nice & clear as well.

[Carole]

Yes I toyed with going out too, but there is so little darkness it's hardly worth setting up. 

I only managed to get about 1 1/2 hours on 4.6.2010 by the time I aligned etc etc and there is even less time now.

Carole

[RobertM]

Know how you feel Fay, I was up till the same time too.

Put all my kit back together last night (it's been in the back of the car since the last DSC) and did a PA using PoleAlignMax (Cherry tree masks Polaris so can't use the PA scope).  Since it was going to be clear through the night I tried a feature of the Ascom mount driver to stop tracking at a set time.  I started imaging at midnight and finished at 3am so managed to get quite a few 10 min subs.  Unfortunately the PA wasn't set accurately enough so the result wasn't good but at least it proved the concept.

I must admit I was more than a bit concerned with the cloud cover when I woke up this morning, especially when the prediction was clear as a bell, but I may try this again in future if I can _garantee_ it won't rain.  It's certainly an option to image during the week at this time of the year when work beckons early in the morning!

Robert

[MarkS]

It was a very good sky - I got my best guiding ever: 0.11 pixel error RMS.

BUT my more accurately re-assembled Tak T-ring adaptor made actually made things much worse - this is becoming really tedious.  There must be inaccuracies elsewhere also.  However, I wasn't going to stay up all night mucking around with tinfoil shims. 

I'm going to tackle that during the forthcoming clear nights ...

[Fay]

Well, I think it is good to get outside for practice. I had a few problems.....what's new, & it is important to do this

[RobertM]

I got my best guiding ever: 0.11 pixel error RMS

At what focal length? i.e what does that equate to in terms of arcsec?

Robert

[MarkS]

0.11 pixel on the QHY5 sitting on my usual 300mm guide lens. Pixel size is 5.2 microns.

This translates into 0.39 arcsec RMS